Goal Monitoring - II

Here I am, as predicted yesterday, ready to start monitoring the goal of increasing the advertisement income from this site. At the moment I am going to concentrate solely on Google Adsense income - though it may well be that sometime in the future I will need to increase the scope of the goal to cover all types of advertising.

My task today is to decide what my goal is for the rest of the month. I’m regarding this as a dry run for only a week to shake out any problems with the method.

Ok, we start with the current average daily income for January which is $3.21. Since most of the month has already passed, whatever action I take over the next week is going to be limited in how far it can effect this month’s average. So, bearing that in mind, what would be the minimum target that would challenge me? I think $3.50 would be about right. What would be the absolute maximum target that would challenge me without overwhelming me? I’m going to say $4 though I may be pitching that a bit high.

So my range is $3.50 - $4.00. Using the one third rule, that means my target for this month is $3.67.  I’ve got to raise the average by 46 cents from today’s figure of $3.21. I have seven days to do it in, which means I need to raise it by 7 cents a day (rounded to the nearest cent).

So my targets are as follows (measured at the beginning of each day):

26th  3.28

27th  3.35

28th  3.42

29th  3.49

30th  3.56

31st   3.63

1st      3.67

To remind you: every day that I am below the target for that day I add a 30-minute slot into my day in which I do nothing except work on the advertising income. These slots are cumulative - so if I were to be below the target for three days’ running I would have to work for three 30-minute slots on nothing else. Conversely every day I am below the target I can take off one slot (assuming there are any).

So today as I am exactly on the target by definition I have no compulsory time scheduled. But of course not having a compulsory slot doesn’t mean that I do no work towards the goal. Writing this post is actually an important action towards it. Anyway I can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s figure is!

Comments

[David W]

Hi Mark,
good luck with the new venture.
I am using a slightly modified version of your diet goal monitoring and although it is early days I am quite encouraged by the results and therefore understand/agree with your goal monitoring process.
With the diet model, we all know (but rarely follow) how to control our weight and therefore the rules you have in place will have a high degree of success.
However with the advertising model, is it sufficient just to spend more time on it or do you need to understand better what controls/drives the revenue stream. Or will some of your time slots be used to determine these factors.
Regards
David

[Mark Forster]

Hi David
I don't think there's any shortage of advice on how to increase ad income. There's tons free on the internet, plus plenty of books, ebooks, etc. I've already got a list of about twenty things I could do.

What there is a shortage of is time to implement the ideas. So I think the crucial factor is setting aside the time to do it.

Whether I am right or not, we shall see!

Mark

[Pascal Venier]

Mark, with all due respect, factoring in the opportunity cost, I am wondering whether this will be an efficient use of your time?

[Pascal Venier]

I realise the way I worded this may sounds odd, for this I apologize. Investing time on your ads will perhaps never make it financially viable but by contrast investing x times 30 minutes in another type of task you would be likely to have a much higher ROI?